Readings: Psalm 119: 33-40, Romans 13:8-10, Matthew 18: 15-20
Let us pray: May your word for us, O God, speak into our
hearts and minds, challenge us, encourage us and assure us in our faith and our
living, in Jesus name. Amen
Love does no wrong to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
The minimalist in me enjoys it enormously when I find
just a few words to encompass and express my understanding of what it is that I
believe, how it is that I am called to live as a Christ follower. After comes the waterfall of words that help
explain, understand and play out just what is meant but just for a moment I
love to rest in simple revelation. Love
does no wrong to a neighbour.
Let us begin with some simple expansions: Love is here is a behaviour rather than an emotion, something
we have to remind ourselves of in a world that uses the word ‘love’ almost
totally emotionally. Our neighbours know
that we love them by our actions, by how we treat them – rather than by an
assurance of emotive words.
Neighbour – who is our neighbour – everyone – our
families, our enemies, our friends, our checkout operator, our colleagues, the
petrol-heads next door. Jesus makes that very clear.
‘Does no wrong’ – sometimes it is good and helpful to
turn a phrase around – instead of ‘does good’ here we have ‘does no
wrong’. In some funny way in my head
that is more challenging because, for me, it cuts off my option of doing
nothing. ‘Doing good’ seems to me to
allow me to choose to step out but also to sit in neutral more than I should,
‘doing no wrong’ doesn’t allow me to get away with doing nothing when doing
nothing causes harm! It helps take away
the option of being an observer!
Now we move into some deeper meaning.
Love is the fulfilling of the law – what is Paul
saying here? It doesn’t mean that
suddenly law is unnecessary and can be done away with, nor can it be seen as an
achievement in some evolutionary way, where it is a pinnacle, a perfection
reached, an end result. Rather, says
Paul, the law continues to be needed, continues govern our way of living – but
law is not longer in charge, law becomes the servant of love, law must carry
love’s passion for justice and peace, law in fact is measured by love and (here
is the big question) therefore can law be bypassed when it violates the demands
of love, when the way of Caesar causes us to violate the love of
neighbour.
Now there is a challenge – words like subversive and
chaotic and unsafe immediately spring to mind I suspect. Law can be bypassed when it violates the
demands of love. And let me say this:
this is not about our wisdom suggesting a better way, I am talking about when
the voice of Christ shouts in our hearts: ‘This is wrong, this causes
harm’.
One of the
things that has totally intrigued me in my attendance at General Assemblies
sits very much in this camp. And that is
the sense of helplessness that takes hold and almost immobilises me (and others
I suspect) when a purely legal process of debate and majority voting ends in a
resulting decision that is just plain harmful, that every bit of my being which
believes so strongly that ‘love does no wrong to my neighbour’ rebels against –
and whilst I speak out against the decisions, the real question is, do I abide
by a decision that I believe is wrong because a legal process expects me
to. It’s a hugely disturbing question
for all of us. This understanding of
love being the fulfilling of the law challenges me to therefore reject law
which is unChristlike. And to be honest
the culture of accepting democratic decisions is pretty deeply instilled in us
because we fear the alternatives: anarchy, despotism, tyranny. It’s a neat little box we place ourselves in
isn’t it, a place of acceptance of something we feel is wrong because it has
gone though what we consider are fair decision making processes. Same with elections – I can believe that a
policy of a party that diminishes the vulnerable is wrong but obviously others
don’t so I will do as they say until I use the process to change the law. We
have this reluctance to accept a third option – to choose to speak out and act
out against any law that violates the demands of love. Well I reckon Jesus would say that is not
good enough. I reckon Jesus would say
that letting the market sort accommodation issues in Christchurch is wrong – it
violates the demands of love. I reckon Jesus would say that excluding anyone
from leadership in the church because of who they born to be rather than for
discerning their call to ministry is equally violating the demands of
love. I reckon that laws that do nothing
to remove child poverty or fail to recognise the dire state of the planet or
protect the rights of the rich and powerful to the detriment of the vulnerable
are laws that need to be challenged.
Doing no harm to neighbours. Yeah
right!
Yet the arguments to work only within the legal
processes are compelling. It is easy to
assume that there is a greater collective worldly wisdom and the arguments of ‘It’s much more complex
than that’ and the ‘chaos if everyone did what they thought was right’ are
powerful squelchers of our independent thought, our desire to live with love as
our measure in all our actions.
So where do we go from here – how do we stop this just
being a slightly edgy sermon and make it into a challenge for living in
Christ’s way?
Yesterday I had some extremely interesting
conversation about how we as Christians engage with the world and, in
particular, political systems. Do we engage
from the edge, being a watcher and occasional engager or do we get ourselves
right in there, become part of the system so that we can change things from
within – as two Presbyterian Ministers have done - David Clark nationally and
Glen Livingstone in Christchurch Council?
Or do we disassociate completely?
Fifty years ago, preaching politics from the pulpit could and did result
in removal from ministry – happened in our Methodist Church in Balclutha. That I suspect is disassociation, living in a
bubble of self righteousness.
A group of us began with watching a online clip from a
US Chat show – where the presenter, a non Christian, said some pretty hard
things to listen to – pointing out the huge gulf between Christ’s teachings of
peace, equality, justice, mercy and ‘Christians’ who actively excluded, made
war, spoke and acted violently, amassed fortunes on the backs of the broken and
downtrodden.
Then we talked about how long a US President or anyone
in high places of power might last if they put Christ’s law of love above the
law of the land for retribution, riches and political dominance. Not long – we suspected – but goodness would
it speak loudly to the world.
So what to do?
Now I may get myself in real trouble here – but it
struck me as I read again the passage from Matthew that here was a teaching
that might just suggest to us a way of being love not just within the church
but also in the world.
When a person, or a law, or a process has offended
against the demands of love, speak to that fault, you yourself and in the
company of others. If it is still
unchanged tell it to the wider church, or to the world, and if love continues
to be rejected then walk away from it, holding fast to the way of Christ knowing
that in the reconciling power of Christ, love will triumph over hatred, grace
over division, mercy over retribution.
And as we come to the table today, can we be reminded
of how many times divisions and anger and hatred have been put aside when we
have been able to eat at table together, when we share life stories, food,
hospitality with each other and with Christ.
Here, in the presence of Christ, we recognise not only our own humanity,
but the humanity of our neighbours, whom we are called to do no wrong to. Amen
Margaret Garland
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